M0809: Operational Information Confidentiality
Deploy mechanisms to protect the confidentiality of information related to operational processes, facility locations, device configurations, programs, or databases that may have information that can be used to infer organizational trade-secrets, recipes, and other intellectual property (IP).
Analyst context for executives and security teams
Operational Information Confidentiality is an ICS mitigation focused on protecting sensitive operational knowledge: process details, facility information, device configurations, programs, databases, trade secrets, recipes, and other IP. For leaders, the risk is not only data loss; stolen operational information can expose how the business runs and may help an adversary plan future activity against production environments.
Executive priority
Prioritize this where operational data would create business, safety, competitive, or resilience risk if disclosed. Executives should ask who can access engineering, process, configuration, scheduling, and facility-location information; whether access is justified and auditable; and whether confidentiality controls can produce evidence aligned to IEC 62443 SR/CR 4.1 expectations. This mitigation is especially relevant to reducing risk from Theft of Operational Information (T0882).
Technical view
Because ATT&CK provides no detection text, SOC, IR, and OT security teams should validate control and evidence coverage around access to operational repositories and systems that store or expose design documents, schedules, rotational data, device configurations, programs, databases, and facility/process information. Detection engineering should focus on unauthorized or unusual access, collection, transfer, or exposure of these information classes, while avoiding assumptions about specific platforms because none are specified in the object.
Likely telemetry
- Access logs for operational document repositories, engineering workstations, file shares, databases, and configuration/program storage locations
- Identity and authorization records showing users, groups, service accounts, and privilege changes for operational information stores
- File/object audit events for read, copy, export, archive, bulk download, or permission changes involving sensitive operational artifacts
- Network or data-transfer logs that can show movement of operational documents or configuration data between zones or to external destinations
- Change management, backup, and engineering workflow records that distinguish approved operational access from unusual activity
Detection direction
- Inventory where operational information resides before tuning detections; blind spots commonly come from unmanaged engineering shares, legacy databases, exported backups, or informal document stores.
- Baseline normal access patterns for engineers, operators, vendors, and service accounts, then alert on unusual access volume, timing, source, or data classes.
- Tune for high-risk behaviors such as bulk access, permission weakening, atypical exports, access from unexpected accounts, or access inconsistent with approved work orders.
- Correlate file/database access with identity changes and network transfer evidence to separate legitimate engineering activity from suspicious collection or staging.
- Expect false positives during maintenance windows, audits, migrations, backups, and engineering projects; require change-management context in triage.
Mitigation priorities
- Classify operational information by sensitivity and business consequence, including IP, recipes, process details, facility data, device configurations, programs, and databases.
- Restrict access using least privilege and role-based need-to-know for employees, vendors, service accounts, and engineering roles.
- Protect repositories and transfer paths with confidentiality controls appropriate to the environment, such as access control, encryption where feasible, secure storage, and controlled export processes.
- Audit and periodically review permissions, especially for shared operational repositories, backups, databases, engineering tools, and vendor-access paths.
- Integrate confidentiality requirements into OT change management, vendor management, incident response, and compliance evidence collection.
Analyst notes and limits
This is a mitigation object, not a technique. Its decision value is in reducing exposure of operational knowledge that could reveal production methods, facility details, device configurations, programs, databases, trade secrets, recipes, and IP. The related ATT&CK context is T0882, Theft of Operational Information, which includes theft of design documents, schedules, rotational data, or similar artifacts from production environments.
ATT&CK does not specify platforms, tactics, or detection guidance for M0809. Local architecture, repository locations, identity model, OT/IT segmentation, and engineering workflows are required to determine exact telemetry, control implementation, and alert logic. No active exploitation, attribution, or guaranteed detection coverage is implied.
Operational Information Confidentiality
Deploy mechanisms to protect the confidentiality of information related to operational processes, facility locations, device configurations, programs, or databases that may have information that can be used to infer organizational trade-secrets, recipes, and other intellectual property (IP).
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICS | T0882 | Theft of Operational Information | Example mitigations could include minimizing its distribution/storage or obfuscating the information (e.g., facility coverterms, codenames). In many cases this information may be necessary to support critical engineering, maintenance, or operational functions, therefore, it may not be feasible to implement. |
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
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Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Current bundle | 7b2d55f835fb… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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mitre-attack M0809Open source URL
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